Hello and welcome to Rotciv's Affliction Warlock Pre-Raid Gear Guide! My name is Rotciv and in this guide, I'll cover everything you need to know to gear your new level 80 affliction warlock.

This gear guide is up to date as of patch 3.3.3., and some information may become irrelevant or even false in the future.

In this guide, I will list gear that you can acquire from Emblems of Frost, Heroic Dungeon, and Crafted gear. In addition, I will list some dungeon quest gear. Please note that I am not listing you the BiS pre-raid gear guide. I am only listing you the gear that you need to get into raids. This guide is a mere resource for you to use not a guide that tells you "get that gear! It's BiS!". Play around with tools such as Rawr to give you the best DPS with these gears.

Finally, I suggest that you use the Dungeon Finder tool to run dungeons as most of the best pre-raid gear are from dungeons and emblems.

Stat Priority

When looking for you gear, you will look for a certain stats. Affliction warlocks only look for two stats: haste and spell power. They are the supreme stats for affliction warlocks. Other stats that are good, but you shouldn't prioritize them over haste and spell power, are critical strike rating and spirit.

However, the ultimate stat for ANY dps classes is hit rating. You will need 17% hit rating to be hit capped. Of course, this number can be reduced by certain things such as talents, spells, racials. For example, Misery/Faerie Fire gives 3% hit rating and Suppression gives 3% hit rating. After you reach the hit rating (RAID BUFFED), then hit rating will be useless.

In conclusion, when looking for gear, use this chart to prioritize which gear gives the best upgrade:

The Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers is what you're going to aim for. It is crafted gear so it may be pricey depending on your server. You can get the Royal Moonshroud Bracers if that is cheaper on your server, but it is not as good as the wizard's bracers. If you need the hit, run the Heroic HoF to get the Bracer of Worn Molars.

I highly suggest that you get the T10 gloves. Most warlocks tend to get the 4pcT10 without the chest piece (which you will be using the Meteor's Chasers Raiment). Also this glove has hit rating which is good!

The Circle of Ossus is nice, but it's not really a dps belt (more like a healer's belt). The PoS belt and the HoF belt is more a caster dps class. The difference between the two is that one has spirit and the other has haste/crit. Again, if you need the hit, get the Omission belt.

We are recently working on improving the quality of content here on WoW-Pro.com, both by limiting low ranked guides and by moving out of date guides into archives. For more information, see the full news post detailing this process.

This guide needs an update to make sure it is current with patch 4.0. However it still has enough useful information that it will be left in it's proper section as-is.

When Cataclysm is released, this guide will become obsolete, and will be moved to the archive section.

If someone else would like to adopt the guide, or if you have any questions about this process, feel free to comment here.

I've played on and off for 3 years and am just now rolling out my first Lock. Could you make a guide for the basics of leveling a Lock? Not a leveling guide but a guide to specing and gearing etc for those of us who have questions on our way up the leveling ladder? My first primary was a Mage so i'm familiar with casters but I'm assuming playing a lock is considerably different.

Also, I listed some Kel'Thuzad/Gul'dan Conquest items. Although they are not the best pre-raid gear for affliction warlocks, I did include them for the sake of the guide.

To answer your final question, I did have a higher level toon (same name, same server). I decided to quit WoW when I reached the level cap, 70 (this was ages ago back in BC), due to IRL and personal matters. However, I did check WoW sites, such as Wow.com and Elitist Jerks, to see what happened in the WoW world when I left, and I still am an avid reader.

Although I'm currently leveling my "new" Rotciv, I have many experiences as raiding/leveling affliction warlock back in BC.